The Port of Adventure. C. N. Williamson
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feel her power would do more harm than good, because the night had suddenly become haunted by the spirit of the dead man. "I'm punished," she thought, superstitiously. But she exerted herself to be cheerful, lest Nick should go East disgusted with her. And that would be the end of all.
IV. A GIRL IN MOURNING
Angela May sat in her chair on the promenade-deck of the Adriatic and felt peacefully conscious that she was resting body and brain.
The ship was not crowded, for it was spring, and the great tide of travel had turned in the opposite direction—toward Europe. On either side of her chair were several which were unoccupied, and a soothing silence hovered round her, through which she could listen to the whisper of the sea as the ship glided on to the land of hope.
Loneliness gave a real joy to Angela; for, young as she was, she had lived through an ordeal, and had taken a step which meant high nervous tension leading up to a supreme decision. She was glad all was over, and well over; desperately glad that her courage had not failed.
"Oh, how thankful I am!" she said again and again, under her breath. Still, she vaguely envied some of the family parties on the ship, who appeared happy and united. Not that she wanted them to talk to her. Witty, lively people could be very nice when you were in the mood for them, but agonizing when you were not; and since it wasn't permissible to cover human beings up like canaries when you had tired of them, or send them away like children when they had prattled enough, Angela cuddled down among her cushions and rugs, glad to be let alone for the first time in her life. But there was a young mother with a small imp of a curly-haired girl, who fascinated her, and made her think. Once, when the imp fell on the deck, to be caught up and kissed until a wail ended in a laugh, Angela said to herself, "If my mother had been like that, everything would have been different for me."
Saunterers for exercise or flirtation often turned for a glance at Angela. What they saw was a slim girl, with pearly fair skin, big gray eyes, quantities of wavy hair of so pale a yellow-brown that it was like gold under the mourning hat she wore. Her low black collar made the slender throat that rose out of it white as a lily. The oval of her face was perfect, and when she read or closed her eyes, as she sometimes did, the long lashes, many shades darker than her hair, and the delicate arch of the brown eyebrows, gave her the soft, sweet look of a child asleep.
Always the glances were more admiring than curious; but they were curious, too, for every one was wondering who she was. In spite of her youth, there was something of pride and distinction about her which made it seem that she could not be an ordinary sort of person you had never heard of; a mere Miss Smith or Mrs. Brown. Yet all the "swells" on board had been duly accounted for and recognized. She was not one of them.
"What a pretty girl!" people said. "And she seems to be travelling alone, unless her friends are too sick to come out of their cabins. Apparently she hasn't even brought a maid—yet what lovely clothes she has, though so simple, and all black. Perhaps she's in mourning for her father or her mother, or some near relation. She's too young to be a widow!"
Angela did not much mind these glances, or this gentle curiosity, for no normal woman objects to being thought pretty. But it was delightful to feel sure that no one knew who she was. If she were on the passenger-list as the Princess di Sereno she would be more stared at and bothered than that poor, fat Duchess of Dorsetshire, who was too near-sighted to recognize her at a distance, thank goodness. Each glance thrown her way would have been an annoyance, for there would have been nothing flattering in any spice of interest her title gave. Some silly creatures might have stared at her because she was a princess; but—far worse—others would have looked because they knew all about her.
These would have buzzed: "Why, that's the Princess di Sereno, don't you know, the only child of the California millionaire who died about ten years ago, so suddenly while his wife and little daughter were in Europe! The girl married that Roman prince, Paolo di Sereno, who used to make such a sensation going about in an aeroplane, and gambling high at Monte Carlo—awfully handsome man, a lot older than she. He must have been nearly forty, and she seventeen, when she married him. Her mother made the match, of course: girl just out of school—the wedding wasn't six weeks after she was presented in England. The prince met her there, has English relations, like most of the Roman nobility. But the interesting part of the story is this: they never lived together as husband and wife. The bride either found out some secret the prince had kept from her (which is what people believe), or else there was a mysterious row the first hour after the wedding. Anyhow, something happened; he went off the same day and left her with her mother. Afterward, he came back; but it was an open secret that the two were no more than strangers, or, you might say, polite acquaintances, though they lived at opposite ends of his palace in Rome, which her money restored, and his country place near Frascati. There was never the least scandal, only wild curiosity. Now she has cut the whole thing. Apparently couldn't stand the empty sort of life, or else he did something worse than usual, at which she drew the line."
Angela did not much care whether people in Rome knew the truth or not. That no longer greatly mattered to her, because she meant never, never to go back to Rome, or to see Paolo di Sereno, or any of his friends—who had never really been her friends. But she did not want people on the ship to know, because she was tired of being talked about, and her hope was to begin a new and different life. For herself, she had nothing to conceal; but, she had never felt any pride or pleasure in being a princess, and after the flatteries and disillusions, the miseries and foolish extravagances of the last hateful, brilliant six years, everything connected with them, and the historic title her dead father's money had bought, was being eagerly obliterated by Franklin Merriam's daughter. She knew little about her forebears on her father's side, except that they were English, whereas Paolo had centuries behind him crammed full of glorious ancestors whose deeds were celebrated on tapestries of great beauty and value. Her one tolerable memory of Paolo was that he had never touched her hand since their marriage; but the memory of her father was sacred. She adored him, and was never weary of recalling things he had said to her, pleasures he had planned for her as a child, and, above all, his stories of California, whither she was now bound.
Angela had taken the name of "Mrs. May"; May, because May was her birth-month, and also her middle name given by her father, whereas Angela had been her mother's choice. Therefore she was just superstitious enough to feel that "May" might bring happiness, since her father's memory was the single unshadowed spot in her life of twenty-three years. A brilliant life it would have seemed to most women, one to be envied; but Angela could not see why.
The lashes which shaded her slate-gray eyes had that upward curl which shows an undying sense of humour, and she had been a merry little girl, with flashes of wit which had enchanted Franklin Merriam before she was snatched away to Europe at eleven, never to see him again. Even at school where she had been "dumped" (as Mrs. Merriam's intimate enemies put it), Angela had kept the girls laughing. Now, though she had imagined her gay spirit dead with childhood, she began to be visited by its ghost. She amused herself on shipboard with a thousand things, and a thousand thoughts which made her feel the best of "chums" with her new friend and companion, Angela May. "I've come back from twenty-three to seventeen," she thought, and pretended that there had never been an Angela di Sereno, that scornful young person who had forbidden the prince to come near her on learning that there was another whom he should have married instead of Millionaire Merriam's daughter.
When she was a little girl in Boston (where Mrs. Merriam had insisted upon living), Angela used to sit on her father's knee; and as he curled her yellow hair over his fingers he wove romances of the Golden West, reluctantly deserted for his wife's sake; and though many illusions had broken like bright bubbles, this ideal still glittered before Angela's eyes. She had been promised by her father that she should visit California with him, when "Mother brought her back from Europe"; but he had died, and mother had not brought her back; so now she was going to make the pilgrimage alone. Not only did she intend to see the places her father had described, but when she had seen all and could choose, she meant to buy land and make a home for herself, her first real home.
Wherever